Garden District house is perfect character in Oscar-nominated Brad Pitt movie 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'

Courtesy of Paramount PicturesA young but old Benjamin (Brad Pitt) hobbles on crutches in front of the Nolan House in 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.' The house on Coliseum Street has a history that's just as intriguing as the Oscar-nominated movie.

Jennifer Zdon / The Times-Picayune'Benjamin Button' director David Fincher saw the Nolan family home during a Garden District stroll with a location scout. He had to have it for the movie, he said, and with a lot of persuasion, he got what he wanted.

One major character in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" won't be sitting expectantly in the audience when the 2009 Academy Awards are given out on Feb. 22, even though the movie received 13 nominations -- more than any other -- this week.

But if Oscars were given for best supporting role by a family homestead, the house at 2707 Coliseum St. surely would be winning a gold statuette to place atop one of its hand-carved mahogany mantelpieces.

Those who have seen the movie will recognize the sprawling, 8,000-plus-square-foot raised centerhall cottage as the old folks' home where Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) is raised by the resident manager, Queenie (Taraji P. Henson).

For William T. Nolan II and his siblings, it is simply home.

Video: Benjamin Button house in New Orleans

"It was fun to watch the movie, because the house was used so accurately, " Nolan said. "The way it was lived in in the movie was the way we lived in it."

That is, exuberantly, noisily, sometimes tragically or poignantly -- all the emotions that a three-generation family home absorbs as history unfolds in its corridors.

Modest beginnings

Built as a simple cottage in 1832 on a two-thirds-acre lot in the Garden District, the house became the Nolan family home in 1872, when it was bought by Ulisse Marinoni, president of the People's Bank. He renovated it elaborately, adding a second story and dormer window.

Marinoni's daughter, Olga, inherited the residence, and in 1907 married Nolan's grandfather, the first William T. Nolan, an architect who made his own changes, including the addition of a sun parlor on the main floor and a sleeping porch above it. They raised four children in the house, and their son and daughter-in-law, Ulisse and Mary Nell Porter Nolan, raised seven more.

"With seven of us and my parents and my grandfather, there were 10 of us living here, " Nolan said. "And we always had friends over. I remember running up and down the basement stairs, just like Benjamin does in the movie, and playing on the back steps where, in the film, the baby is left. We lived mostly in the back -- the front was the formal part of the house, for entrances. The movie picked up on that."

The large backyard contained a formal garden in Nolan's day, and the airy ground-floor sun parlor overlooking it -- used in the movie for hospital scenes -- was later a TV room. It also was the maternity room.

"My father and mother lived upstairs, but when the babies were born, she would move down here with the newborn for two or three months, " Nolan said. Nearby is a small alcove where the home's first telephone once was ensconced, complete with desk and secretary to answer the infrequent rings.

A welcoming heart

Jennifer Zdon / The Times-PicayuneThe glass on the front door of the home casts rainbows on the floor. 'They filmed the actual stairs and door -- they wanted the banister and the way the light played off it, because that was authentic.' William T. Nolan II said.

Jennifer Zdon / The Times-PicayuneNolan inevitably got caught sliding down the banister as a child, he said.

The heart of the home is the richly paneled central reception area, with its atrium and grand staircase. The antique beveled-glass front doors cast rainbows on the white-oak floors, dancing colors that Nolan remembers trying to catch with chubby fingers as a toddler. You won't see them in the movie: The front-door glass and the stained-glass windows above the staircase were removed for safekeeping during filming.

Flanking the formal entrance to the house are the Gold Room and Music Room, the former a place where guests waited to be announced, the latter a spot where the family gathered for social evenings in pre-television days.

"We weren't allowed in the Gold Room, " Nolan said. "So of course we would go in there, and always got in trouble."

He also recalls sliding down the mahogany banisters, and tying a rope around a high staircase newel post -- the ceilings are 14 feet tall -- to swing across the living room. Though such irreverent behavior was not openly tolerated, the Nolans lived exuberantly and large. Neighborhood children had a standing invitation to come play, and there was always a friend or three at the dinner table.

Nolan's sister, Nell Nolan Young, The Times-Picayune's social columnist, recalls returning from a date as a teenager to find her mother and father, clad in ballroom attire from some formal outing, standing across from each other in the dining and Gold rooms, tossing a football back and forth.

"My father simply looked up and said, 'You're home a little early, Nell. Did you have a good time?' " she said with a laugh.

Encounters with history

The rooms in the Coliseum Street house hold more universal stories, too. Union soldiers commandeered it during the Civil War, and the address gave the city both a king (the late Ulisse Nolan) and queen of Carnival (Elizabeth Anne "Betty" Nolan, now Walsh).

"That's where I slept during Hurricane Betsy, " William Nolan said as he pointed to a velvet-cushioned window seat in the downstairs library. "At least until the roof blew off."

When that happened, Nolan's father took the boys up to the attic, where the Oriental rugs had been rolled and stored for the summer. "We unrolled all the rugs and laid them across the rafters to soak up the water, " Nolan said.

Hurricane Katrina was not much kinder: Water and roof damage cost several hundred thousand dollars to repair, Nolan says.

Despite such meteorological setbacks, much of the home's original luster survives. From crank-open windows to burnished brass door hardware, intricately carved plaster sconces to chandeliers made to burn gas and later re-wired for electricity, the home retains much of its 19th-century detailing.

Jennifer Zdon / The Times-PicayuneMuch of the home's 19th-century detailing remians intact, such the chandelier and other features in a front room.

A small breakfast room off the kitchen was "where we had all our meals, " Nolan said. "My mother, father and all seven children. Except for my grandfather, who was the pater familias, and who ate by himself in the dining room."

Upstairs, Nolan's grandfather lived in the master bedroom until his death. Even then, Nolan's parents remained in their back bedroom, where his father had lived since he was 6 years old, with the same beautiful antique tester bed.

"They felt that the master bedroom was still Papie's room, " Nolan said. Now his own grandchildren call him by the same pet name he once used for his grandfather.

Built for life

Children were rotated among bedrooms by gender and age. The three boys shared a bedroom, while the girls were given private chambers.

"We'd start off in one room, then move to a bigger one depending on how old we were, " Nolan said. Early years were spent in the upstairs sleeping porch, he says, where a quartet of no-nonsense twin-sized cots were lined up "like Civil War beds."

Courtesy of Paramount PicturesDaisy (Cate Blanchett, left) tends to the young (but very old) Benjamin Button (right) in a bedroom redesigned for the movie.

The room was cooled comfortably by a big attic fan and three walls of windows. In fact, while a central heating system had been installed in the early 1900s, the house didn't get central air-conditioning -- it took four condensers -- until 1998, after Nolan's father died.

"The house was built for the climate and the way people lived, " Nolan said. Tall rooms, breezeways and screened windows that always stayed open kept the house comfortable in the summer, while a fireplace in every room provided warmth in the winter. And the structure's 7-foot piers proved a trustworthy form of flood insurance.

Today, as in many large families, Nolan and his siblings have scattered. However, his daughter, Ashley, is a local teacher and actress (you can see her in the movie as the doctor who delivers Daisy's baby).

These days, the house is quiet, its rooms mostly empty now that the filmmakers have carried away their sets.

So it was gratifying, Nolan said, to watch the family home come to life again in "Benjamin Button."

"There was pride and satisfaction that all the work we had done on the house was appreciated. In the movie, the house was where life was being lived, and we felt that, too. Everything resonated."